


my heart is heavy as stone / Prometheus (Hero/Monster)

by passeridae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Gore, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/passeridae/pseuds/passeridae
Summary: They chain him to a wall, and at first he thinks that’s the end of it. Then the eagle comes.On some days, Petras watches. Jack can see him, staring down from the observation deck, mouth pulled into a cruel grin. He doesn’t know if this is accidental, or by design.





	my heart is heavy as stone / Prometheus (Hero/Monster)

They chain him to a wall, and at first he thinks that’s the end of it. Then the eagle comes.

On some days, Petras watches. Jack can see him, staring down from the observation deck, mouth pulled into a cruel grin. He doesn’t know if this is accidental, or by design.

Once the public had started baying for his blood, the final nail had already been in his coffin, he just hadn’t known it. He’d done his best to put out the fires, to calm the press, to do _anything_ but he was blocked at every turn. An aide losing a press release, commands ignored, as if, despite being the head of an international peacekeeping organisation, he was voiceless. Already guilty, whether that guilt was real or not.

Then the wall.

Then the eagle.

It’s televised, he knows (has been told, has been shown). The disgraced leader of Overwatch, his liver ripped out every day to cure his bleeding heart, only for it to grow back again. A fantastic metaphor, a powerful one. How can he change when his body refuses to, hm? He hates it. Hates Petras for doing it. Hates Petras for flaying him in front of an audience who will only respond with disgust. Hates the power he wields. Some days, he can do nothing but hate. What else is there.

Sometimes, it is not an eagle that comes to him, but a man. The man is the eagle, of course, and the lion, and the wolf. He’s SEP too, has to be, but Jack’s never met him. There’s no other explanation for it, for the power he has. He’s blank faced, mostly, moves slow and languid like they have all the time in the world. Like he’s tired, so tired he just wants to lie down and sleep. His eyes are eternally half lidded, a world away even as he rips into Jack’s abdomen.

It is, admittedly, a great deal more unnerving when he eats Jack’s liver wearing a human face, but sometimes they talk, briefly, and it’s the high point of Jack’s day. It is one of these talkative days, that Jack finds out that his eagle’s name is Gabriel.

“It’s a good name,” Jack tells him, earnestly, as Gabriel delicately pulls the vein from between the two lobes of his liver. Today Gabriel had decided to take things slowly, peeling back Jack’s fascia one by one and delicately severing arteries and tendons until he had his prize. Blood spatter covers the floor, the walls, Jack’s torso. Gabriel’s face. Gabriel licks a drop of blood from his lips as he focuses on keeping the pressure even in order to pull the entire portal vein out in one go. It makes a wet slurping sound as it comes free, and Jack shudders, weakly, in his chains.

He always feels woozy after Gabriel’s done with him. Blood loss. He knows the sensation well from _before_. His fingers tingle, his ears rush, his skin pales to something bone-white. His breaths come short. His heart pounds. The sensations, he realises, are indistinguishable from the first flush of love. “Why do you only sometimes come here human, Gabriel?” he asks before he can think.

Gabriel pauses his chewing, stares owlishly at Jack for a moment. Swallows. Tilts his head to the side with a crease to his brow, as if Jack has said something profound. After a time, where Jack has been increasingly convinced he was going to leave and not answer at all, he responds.

“Petras told me I was to take animal form. When he, or someone of his, is watching I do what he expects. He didn’t consider that humans are still animals.”

Jack laughs. He can’t help himself. It hurts, aggravates the open wound in his abdomen, but the absurdity of it all is suddenly too much. Gabriel looks hurt, angry, and before Jack can say anything more he’s gone in a puff of smoke.

The next few days, he comes as an eagle, and takes especial joy in rending Jack’s flesh as he feeds. Jack supposes he deserves it.

In the end, the worst part of the boredom is the pain. Not the pain of Gabriel tearing out his liver, although that does hurt, but it’s gone soon enough. No, it’s the pain of his liver regrowing that really gets to him. It’s a stinging, stabbing pain, with a layer of itchiness that would drive Jack up the wall if he had the ability to move. It’s not like he _can_ itch it, being inside him and all, but goddamn does he want to try. And with nothing but a bare room around him, there’s nothing else to focus on. After a while, he begins to fear that the pain will drive him insane. Petras’ final insult, broadcast live for the whole world to see. 

He finds himself thinking on the past, more and more. Hiding away from the present for hours upon hours. Thinking on his mistakes, the pile of bodies at his doorstep. Every time he’d overreached his power, sizeable as it was. Every time his attempts to help humanity had backfired. Angela’s ressurection tech, which had seemed like such a fantastic leap forward in medical treatment, being used to bring prisoners back from the dead and torture them over again. Cryostasis units, which he’d personally okayed before full testing had been carried out, killing entire ecopoints. Authorising a thousand missions which had killed more than they’d saved.

He’d been so blind. Naive, really. So focused on doing _right_ he didn’t think about what the outcome would truly be. And of course, nobody had stepped in to tell him to stop before it all came crashing down around him.

As time moves on, people lose interest in him. Petras certainly does. He knows this, because Gabriel comes to him more and more in his human guise. Jack no longer has an idea of how long he’s been here — the lights are always on high, and he’s not fed. Sometimes, the room is hosed down, but that’s intermittent. Once, it happened soon enough after Gabriel’s leaving that his abdominal cavity filled with water, other times the wait was so long that the blood crusted around his feet refused to budge in the spray. He hasn’t smelt anything other than rotted blood in an age. His only knowledge of time passing comes from Gabriel’s visits. Once a day, like clockwork. 

Eventually, he asks why Gabriel keeps coming back. “Petras’ lost interest, you said so yourself, why do you bother?” Gabriel’s hand is inside his abdominal cavity, flexing softly like Gabriel isn’t quite aware of the motion as he considers Jack’s question. The pressure against his ribcage translates as pain, and Jack has to fight the urge to writhe. Like a greyhound, Gabriel has a strong prey drive.

After a while, the slow response is, “I need to consume flesh to survive. I’m not permitted to kill soldiers or staff, but I can take what I need from you.” A wry grin and Gabriel adds, “it’s nothing personal.” As Gabriel pops segments of Jack’s liver into his mouth like berries, he tells Jack that he’s not allowed outside the bounds of the building, never has been as long as he can remember. Time before he was woken from cryostasis here is… hazy. More smoke than anything else. Jack asks if he’s ever tried to leave, and Gabriel’s brows twitch into a frown before he smooths them out.

“Yes. Once. I was told afterwards that it wasn’t allowed.”

“Did Petras tell you that?” Silence. Gabriel doesn’t even breathe. Jack, despite his best judgement, pushes. Perhaps it’s the blood loss, making him bold. “Why should he tell you what to do?”

Gabriel pops the last globule of liver in his mouth and leaves, a thoughtful expression on his face. Jack passes out from blood loss a few minutes later.

They talk about it again, in subsequent visits. Permutations on the same discussion, and every time Gabriel opens up to him a little more. Talks about his boredom, his frustration. The tests that’re run on him, tedious and painful in turns. How trapped he feels in this building, with nobody to talk to but Jack. Jack can sympathise, there.

Jack asks if Gabriel could wash him, one day, and once Jack’s abdomen has closed they talk as Gabriel runs a sponge over Jack’s skin. He seems fascinated by how pale Jack looks against him, free of the russet flecks that had coated him for so long. Jack hadn’t realised how much his skin had itched until it’d stopped. Once he’s done, Gabriel stares at Jack’s chest for a while, unseeing, deep in thought, before slowly asking, “If I were to defy Petras, he wouldn’t be able to stop me, would he?” His gaze remains fixed on Jack’s torso as Jack’s breath catches in his throat.

His voice is a whisper. “No, he wouldn’t.”

Gabriel hums, thoughtful, places a palm over Jack’s sternum. Jack’s heart beats a staccato under his skin. He feels as if all the air has been punched from his lungs. He doesn’t know what else to say, if anything he says now will matter. Gabriel kisses the hollow of Jack’s throat before he leaves.

The next time Jack sees Gabriel, he’s in the guise of an eagle. He drops Petras’ still beating heart at his feet.


End file.
